Beneath the water the body sank rapidly. Above her on dry land, the nightmare was just beginning.

When Detective Erika Foster receives a tip-off that key evidence for a major narcotics case was stashed in a disused quarry on the outskirts of London, she orders for it to be searched. From the thick sludge the drugs are recovered, but so is the skeleton of a young child.

The remains are quickly identified as seven-year-old Jessica Collins. The missing girl who made headline news twenty-six years ago.

Is the suspect someone close to home? Someone is keeping secrets. Someone who doesn’t want this case solved. And they’ll do anything to stop Erika from finding the truth.

I am an unapologetic raving fan of Robert Bryndza — after reading books 1 & 2 of the Detective Erika Foster Thriller series, I had to dive into Dark Water immediately. I fed my kids fish fingers for 36 hours and I’m not even ashamed of that.

This is such a great thriller series, there can be no judgment of a reader’s actions whilst under the Bryndza spell.

Dark Water delivered another superb mystery tied up in the past and unpredictable in its unraveling. With the missing girl at its centre, you can’t help but think of Madeleine McCann, whose disappearance is the most heavily reported missing child case in history according to Wikipedia. The series’ heroine, Erika Foster, is again up against the world and falling into hot water herself. Erika is such a brilliantly flawed protagonist we can’t help but empathise with her and churn through the pages.

Often, you read a book, love it, think, ‘I must buy more from this author’ yet carry on with your life until you notice the author’s latest book. With the Erika Foster series, you just have to read them ASAP. It’s as if planet Earth will have trouble rotating until you find out what happens next.

It took me about 5 days to “come down” from my three-books-in-four-days #bookbinge. Now I shall sit on my hands until spring 2017, when book #4 is due to hit the shelves.

Natalie Love has worked hard to have it all. She runs a successful London theatre that’s about to host one of Hollywood’s leading stars, Ryan Harrison. She’s pretty sure she’s found her man in yoga boyfriend Benjamin, despite his annoying habit of saying Namaste! every time he speaks. And her eccentric, glamorous Hungarian gran is always on hand to offer sage advice and steaming bowls of goulash.

Life in the bright lights of London has always been Natalie’s escape from her chaotic family in rural Devon and Jamie, the childhood sweetheart she left at the altar fifteen years ago. Until he turns up at her theatre door…

Charming, hilarious and totally unputdownable, Miss Wrong and Mr Right will put a huge smile on your face and keep you guessing who Natalie’s ‘Mr Right’ is until the very last page.

Bryndza structured this romantic comedy much like his thrillers, in that we don’t know who Natalie should/will end up with until the last pages. I loved the protagonist — she balls things up for her career, she second-guesses her actions with men, she has a big heart yet stoops to corporate espionage, she can’t see the guys clearly for their appendages… (that’s a poorly constructed ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ metaphor, sorry). She’s a great character and I’d love to read more books with her as the heroine.

What I also loved what how Bryndza managed to write so well in two very different genres. This is very heartening to me personally as I write in a few different genres and never know if I should “stick to one thing”. A huge number of authors are following suit these days. I predict a big trend in 2017 for “multi-genre success stories” in publishing…

I could tell this was the same author. Despite a similar ‘voice’ to the writing, Bryndza goes for laughs here instead of fear. It’s very successfully achieved.

Now, I’ve started one of his Coco Pinchard comedies, of which he has FIVE. So my book binge can continue. Already, Coco is a far more acerbic, dare-I-say bitter individual… I can guess Bryndza will take her to some fairly mortifying and amusing places.

After 16 years in Paris, and living in 6 other countries prior, Lizzie Harwood now lives in Stockholm, Sweden with her French husband, two children, and angora stray Goldie. When she isn’t escorting her wayward children to further their education (and asking them to please stop meowing on the subway due to their claim to be ‘part cat’)… she writes memoir, women’s fiction, and psychological suspense. She is also an editor/writing cheerleader to incredible writers around the world. Visit editordeluxe.com and lizzieharwoodbooks.com for more.